Abstract: Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising paradigm for the next-generation Internet infrastructure. This paper proposes a simple model of TCP performance in the OBS network. By analyzing the interaction between TCP congestion control mechanism and OBS-specific mechanisms such as burst assembly and buffer-less burst switching, our model quantitatively characterizes TCP throughput as a function of the number of TCP/IP packets assembled in one burst, the burst drop rate and the round-trip time. The model is validated through a number of simulations. Theoretical and simulation results show that there is an optimal number of TCP/IP packet assembled in one burst, which results in maximum throughout.

Key words: optical burst switching, TCP protocol, burst assembly, throughput model